Integration Strategies for Health IT Vendors

Because no one system can suffice, health IT organisations rely on information systems from many different health IT vendors—who are facing increasing pressure from their customers, government regulators, and other vendors to support more standards, protocols, and data types than ever before—to support activities related to patient care

In today’s healthcare environment, however, keeping each system’s data in a separate silo is not feasible, because data needs to move freely among the various systems to match the complex workflows of modern healthcare systems. Interoperability is not optional it’s a mandate from the market.

Implementing an interoperability solution is a much bigger commitment than it initially seems, and vendors that choose this path are often surprised by the overall cost.

This white paper is aimed at four categories of software vendors:

1. Vendors who are embarking on solving the interoperability problem for the first time and facing a “build versus buy” decision.

2. Those who have undertaken the task of creating their own interoperability module and are experiencing a poor return on effort or struggling to implement new, required functionality.

3. Software vendors who have attempted to use a free or open source integration package and are running into limitations, either from the software or the services and support offered by the software’s creators.

4. Those who are embarking on a new offering, solution, or interface type.